The bang for your buck.
Bad: The monthly fee can be pricey, Some levels will be spent in boredom, Having a bad group can hinder progress
Note: For 15$ a month, (ontop of the prices for the games) you can play as long as your wallet can handle.
Azeroth. A world of great adventures and two warring factions. The playable factions available to players are the self-righteous Alliance, and the grotesque Horde. Each with four classes for the standard (two races each added from the expansions), each race having the sets of classes for the player to choose from. This gives the game a sense of variety and uniqueness to the players right off the bat.
Perhaps the biggest pay to play MMORPG on the market to date, its easy to see why World of Warcraft (WoW) holds the place of number one. Its so simple, yet challenging. After a few hours of gameplay, you may find yourself hooked into the game, and notice that you tend to return to it when you have the chance. The game itself is just extremely well crafted and manages to keep players from around the world both entertained, and addicted.
The leveling itself, perhaps, is not the cause. Leveling can tend to be very tedious and repetitive, especially later on in the game as the experience seems to take forever to go up. Leveling up with parties and such may take the edge of the boring process, or may not. Slow levelers will find themselves wanting to walk away, unless they have witnessed the end-game content.
The end-game content is most likely the key mechanic to keeping players satisfied with WoW. You can choose three paths once you level up to the maximum level: Player versus Player combat, player versus environment combat (in epic instances with difficulty set to require more than just one person), or to start a new character. Each option with its own rewards in store.
Player versus environment will lead you to band up with a group of people for intense battles in which you raid one of the many dungeons and collect gear to further power up your character. The people you choose to raid with will make or break you in the raids. One bad member has the potential to drag the entire group down, therefore you are encouraged to pick wisely.
Player versus player can be a problem, as on some servers, one faction completely dominates the other in number of players. On other servers, it may be balanced out.
Speaking of balance, this word seems to be an idea Blizzard ignores. Classes always find a way to be labeled "over-powered," before Blizzard intervenes by weakening the class. This leaves another one to take the "over-powered" title before the cycle is repeated.
However, the game has proven its worth. Although fifteen dollars per month is quite expensive, World of Warcraft will not let you down on serving up your free time on a plate to you as the hours drift away. If you care to try out World of Warcraft, they have a trial on the site that will give you fourteen days free to play around with a character, although you will be heavily restricted on what you can and cannot do.